President Donald Trump has nominated Jon Huntsman for U.S. ambassador to Russia as his administration comes under ever-increasing scrutiny over its ties to Russia. If confirmed, Huntsman will face a difficult landscape trying to balance the president’s desire to improve relations with the Kremlin’s machinations in Ukraine, Syria, elections in the West, and other pressure points, experts say.
And Huntsman would go to Moscow in the midst of several domestic investigations into the Kremlin’s role in the 2016 presidential election and whether there was any coordination between Trump's campaign and Russia to interfere in the race.
Steven Hall, a former senior CIA officer who retired in 2015 and spent much of his career overseeing intelligence operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact, said Huntsman has “all of the characteristics that would make him a good ambassador,” given his previous experience in politics and diplomacy, most notably with an authoritarian regime while serving as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011.
But significant challenges await him in Moscow. First of all, Huntsman will have to face the “normal policy difficulties that come with any administration or ambassador” in dealing with Russia, Hall noted. These are issues that Russia is largely responsible for — namely the annexation of Crimea, the intention to turn the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine into a frozen conflict, election interference in the West, and sanctions related to its actions on all those issues as well as human rights violations.
The other category of challenges the new ambassador will have to tackle will be the Trump administration’s policy toward Russia. “What is that going to look like? And would his advice be taken? And what would his advice even be?” Hall said. “If he says, ‘Look, we need to be hard with the Russians,’ would he get a hearing?”
John Sipher, who retired in 2014 after a 28-year career in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said Huntsman is an “excellent choice” — “a serious person with serious experience who is not a partisan.”
What’s surprising here, he said, is why Huntsman would want to take the gig. “Why would you want to work for President Trump in maybe the most contentious and difficult place? Given the president’s unique, different, and unprecedented positivity toward the Russians, and given everybody else in the administration’s skepticism of Russia, you’re putting yourself in a real difficult bind,” Sipher said.
And it will be difficult for Huntsman to message the administration’s policy on Russia “when it’s not clear what that policy is,” he added.
William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a retired U.S. ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan, called Huntsman “probably a fine choice,” given that he has served as an “ambassador twice before, so he knows what it’s like.”
His time in China “brings an extra dimension” to the table, given the country’s importance for Russia, Courtney said, but his lack of Russian experience and language skills will make the appointment “more complicated.” Huntsman also served as U.S. ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush.
Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 through 2014, told The Salt Lake Tribune that Huntsman — a former Utah governor and Republican candidate for president — was a "terrific choice.”
"Ambassador Huntsman already has experience serving his country in a strategically important country," McFaul said. "His [resume] — businessman, politician, government official — will appeal to Russians. The one unknown is his relationship with the president. Having worked three years at the White House, I benefited greatly from having a close relationship with President Obama. If confirmed, Ambassador Huntsman will need to build his ties to the White House."
The future ambassador will face a number of critical issues upon his arrival to Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow. The “number one issue as far as the West as a whole is concerned is the invasion of Ukraine, and especially the simmering war in eastern Ukraine and the Donbass region,” Courtney noted.
Monitoring the status of the sanctions leveled on Russia for its actions in Ukraine will be key to seeing how Huntsman fairs, as will the sanctions President Barack Obama slapped on Russia over election interference that included the closure of two compounds in the U.S. owned by the Russian government. There have been reports that the Trump administration is considering returning those facilities.
“That will be a touchy issue because if that Russian access was given back, then Congress is going to want to know what President Trump gets in return for that,” Courtney noted. “If he got nothing in return, that means the sanctions for election interference are pretty much ended.”
Trump’s chief counterterrorism advisor Thomas Bossert said Thursday at the National Security Forum in Aspen that Obama’s sanctions leveled upon Russia over the 2016 election interference were not “adequate in my mind.” The closure of the compounds and the removal of 35 Russian government operatives in December was essentially an example of using a “20th century tool” for a 21st century problem, Bossert said.
“What we need to do, living in the largest cyber glass house in the world, is figure out how to increase our defenses and put in place a rational strategy before we go out and do things that are going to make us and our private and critical infrastructure owners more vulnerable,” he said.
According to a declassified U.S. intelligence agencies’ report on Russian hacking and efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber and influence campaign aimed at interfering in the United States election and boosting candidate Trump’s chances.
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly challenged U.S. intelligence on this assessment. Earlier this month, just before heading to Germany where he would meet Putin at the G-20 summit, Trump said, “I think it could very well have been Russia. I think it could well have been other countries. I won’t be specific. But I think a lot of people interfere. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows for sure.”
As the Trump administration sorts through its Syria policy and where it stands on Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which Russia is propping up, the future ambassador will get a better sense of how to tackle Russia in this sphere, Courtney said. Indications that the U.S. is looking to pull back its involvement could potentially reduce the possibility of a U.S.-Russian military clash in Syria, according to the former ambassador.
“That could be less of a source of tension between the U.S. and Russia,” he suggested.
However, Sipher noted the broader issues that come from Russia’s strong operational ties with Hezbollah and Iran in Syria, as well as its support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, speak to more difficulties ahead. Trump wants to improve relations with Russia and will likely seek that from his ambassador, “but in the Middle East we’re more or less on opposing sides,” Sipher said,
Add to that Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the question of how the U.S. should respond, and Huntsman “will have a lot on his plate,” Courtney said.
“Hopefully his experience and analysis of foreign societies will offer him some advantages in analyzing some of the politics of Russia,” Courtney said, adding that his “acquaintance with Communist techniques” from his time in China will “stand him in good stead” in dealing with the former Communist country.
Courtney also suggested that Huntsman may find it useful as part of his overall strategy as ambassador to find ways to reach out to Russian society through cultural and historical exchanges. That “might be a good way to try to stabilize, or at least build, some personal relationships that could be useful for him and could show the Russians the U.S. has a respect for Russia, its history, and its people,” according to Courtney.
Sipher noted that Huntsman’s position as both politician and diplomat will likely serve him well if he is confirmed.
“Politicians are probably the best people to find a way to say two different things in the same sentence,” he said. “Having diplomatic experience along with political skills is a good thing, because he’ll consistently be in a tough place.”
The White House announcement of the Huntsman nomination hit just a half hour after it was reported that Trump had a previously undisclosed meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit. According to reports, the meeting lasted for roughly an hour and only Trump, Putin, and Putin’s translator attended.
Trump claimed in a New York Times interview that the meeting was “not a long conversation” and “could be 15 minutes.” “Just talked about — things,” the president said. “Actually, it was very interesting, we talked about adoption.”
Donald Trump Jr. had initially claimed that the recently revealed June 9, 2016 meeting set up in an email exchange by publicist Rob Goldstone with the subject line “Russia – Clinton – private and confidential” was about adoption.
One of the meeting attendees was Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected lawyer who has lobbied against the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which punishes designated individuals thought to have been involved with human rights violations by withholding visas and freezing financial assets.
The Russian government banned U.S. adoptions of Russian children in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act, under which several dozen people are now subject to sanctions.
The released emails, however, showed that Trump Jr. had eagerly agreed to a meeting about what he was explicitly told was the Russian government’s effort to boost his father’s campaign. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote.
Trump Jr. replied less than 20 minutes later, “if it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
